In today’s digital age, SEO is a non-negotiable marketing facet for online businesses seeking online traction. Getting indexed on Google is the first step in search optimization.
Why?
First of all, almost 92% of all website traffic happens on Google. So, even if you positively rank on other search engines or engage in social media marketing, you still miss out on 9 out of 10 people on the internet.
Secondly, SEO gives your website personality and boosts its “perceived authority.” Publishing high-quality, optimized content lets you demonstrate your expertise to site visitors. This makes leads more likely to convert versus sites without any SEO mechanism in place.
Everything begins with indexation.
So, how exactly do you index a website on Google to kickstart your SEO campaigns? Stay tuned.
What Does it Mean to Index A Website on Google?
When Google indexes a website, it means the site’s pages have been discovered, crawled, and stored in Google’s database.
Indexing doesn’t happen automatically. Googlebot, which is Google’s web crawler, crawls your website via internal links and backlinks, and then evaluates the quality of its content.
Once indexed, your website and its pages become eligible to appear in SERPs when someone types a relevant query. Conversely, without indexing, your site won’t show up on Google at all.
This makes indexing the first crucial step toward gaining visibility and ranking in search engine results pages.
How Does the Indexing Process Work?
Google’s indexing process begins with a three-stage process:
The first stage is Crawling, where Googlebot discovers new pages from known pages via internal links or backlinks. Data from these pages (HTML, CSS, JS, and media) is fetched and then rendered on a version of Google Chrome.
This is followed by the second stage: Indexing. Once the content has been rendered, Googlebot parses the page to understand its logical and hierarchical structure. In cases where duplicate pages exist, the best page representing the group is canonicalized and selected for indexing.
Finally, the last stage is serving. Google interprets user queries and ranks the page according to its degree of relevance to the search.
Here is a quick diagram to demonstrate how the process works:
Indexing is an intricate process, which explains why only 400 billion pages were indexed in 2020 despite Google having discovered trillions of pages by then.
So, how exactly do you know if your website is indexed?
3 Ways to Check if Your Website is Google Indexed
We listed three sure ways to check if your pages are indexed and discoverable on Google:
Solution #1: Use Google Search Operators
The quickest way to check if Google indexes your website is to use the site: search operator.
Go to Google and type. site:yourdomain.com (replacing “yourdomain.com” with your website’s actual URL). You can even be more granular with the search and paste specific page URLs.
If your website is indexed, you’ll see a list of pages Google has in its database. Here is an example:
Solution #2: Use Google Search Console’s URL Inspector Tool
GSC’s URL inspection tool gives you a direct way to check whether specific pages are in Google’s index.
If you already have a GSC account, select your desired property and paste the targeted link into the search bar at the top.
Indexed pages will show a green check mark along with the line “URL is on Google,” as shown below:
Meanwhile, unindexed pages will be grayed out with “URL is not on Google” written on them.
Solution #3: Use IndexCheckr
IndexCheckr automatically monitors the indexing status of specific pages on Google. In addition to tracking if your website is indexed, you can also use the tool to monitor the indexing status of backlinks.
Just create a project, paste the targeted URLs, and set the desired tracking interval (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly). You can track the changes via an intuitive table within IndexCheckr; otherwise, the tool will notify you via email of any changes in indexing status.
Unlike manual checks, IndexCheckr automates scanning multiple URLs simultaneously, enabling you to take appropriate actions.
5 Actionable Tips to Index Your Website on Google and Start Ranking
Need help ensuring the indexation of your website on Google? Here are five tips to help you out:
1. Create High-Quality Reader-Worthy Content
Content quality is the linchpin that holds your SEO campaign together. Therefore, it stands to reason that content, and its quality, depth, accuracy, and comprehensiveness, would be crucial elements for indexation.
Google prioritizes reader-friendly content that provides real value to users. If your content answers questions, matches search intent, and keeps readers engaged, it’s more likely to be indexed and eventually rank.
Focus on creating well-structured articles with original insights. Take note: original. Avoid regurgitating the same generic BS shared by other websites; instead, give your content a personal flair.
In addition, use headings, bullet points, and visuals to make your content easy on the eyes. As users spend more time interacting with your content, Google interprets this as a positive signal, which not only keeps the page indexed but makes the content rank better on SERPs.
2. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console
A sitemap is essentially a roadmap that informs Google about the most critical pages on your site.
Listing a page on the sitemap makes Googlebot’s job easier as it can simply fetch the URL instead of having to crawl it through links manually. Naturally, this speeds up the indexing process by giving Google direct access to your site’s structure.
To create a sitemap, you can access one of those online sitemap generators. Conversely, if you use a CMS like WordPress, sitemaps are automatically generated and only need to be submitted for Google Search Console.
Go to the “Sitemaps” section in GSC, enter your sitemap URL, and click submit. Easy peasy.
3. Request indexing via the URL inspection tool
In addition to tracking the indexing status of pages, the URL Inspection Tool is handy for getting a page added to Google’s index.
As you search the URL of an unindexed page, click Request Indexing in the upper right-hand corner of the report.
4. Build Highly Relevant Contextual Links
We’ve mentioned this above, but it’s worth a repeat: Googlebot discovers pages via links.
One of the most critical channels for content discovery is contextual links, or internal links found in the body of the content.
The more internal links pointing to a page, the higher the probability of Google discovering it, not necessarily indexing it. You can only secure indexing if you prioritize tip #1 of this guide!
While building internal links manually is doable for a small website, it isn’t sustainable at scale. To help you out, you can use AI-powered internal linking toolkits, such as LinkStorm.
LinkStorm utilizes semantic analysis to identify highly relevant, sitewide contextual links. From the tool, you can accept the suggested links, and they will automatically get embedded into your content.
5. Make Sure Your Site is Free from Indexing Issues
Indexing issues can take various forms. But all of them work the same against getting your website or pages indexed on Google.
Here is a quick list of Google indexing issues you might be suffering from and a quick description of what they are:
- Noindex tag on the page’s <head> element: This metatag instructs Google not to index the entire page, preventing it from appearing on search results.
- Robots.txt disallows crawling: If your
robots.txtfile blocks a page or folder, Googlebot won’t crawl it, preventing indexation by extension. - Poor quality content: Thin, duplicate, or unhelpful content may be skipped by Google’s index as it doesn’t add value to searchers.
- Canonicalization issues: If multiple URLs point to similar content but don’t have clear canonical tags, Google may index the wrong version or the non-preferred page.
- Redirection errors and broken links: Pages with faulty redirects confuse search engines, and dead internal links can lead to non-existent pages, wasting crawl budget and site discovery.
All of these issues, when left unchecked and unfixed, can ultimately prevent indexation from happening.
It’s imperative to audit your website and content to see if underlying issues are preventing your pages from getting indexed.
Getting Indexed is Tough, Not Getting Indexed is Tougher
It’s no secret that getting your website or pages indexed on Google is a slow and technical process. However, what many overlook is that the real cost comes when your site isn’t indexed at all.
Without indexing, pages remain invisible to searchers, no matter how valuable you think your content is. That means zero clicks, no traffic, and missed business opportunities from SEO.
Your only saving grace is relying on other marketing channels, such as PPC, social media, and email marketing. Even then, you are missing out on 90% of your possible traffic sources.
Yes, it takes effort to optimize your site, fix errors, and follow best practices, but the reward is visibility on Google, which drives growth.
So, while getting indexed is tough, not getting indexed is even more challenging and far more expensive in the long run.
To get your pages indexed on Google, you need trustworthy SEO and content marketing services. Our expert marketers at InfinitySoftHint can do that for you. Book a call with us to see how our team can help you grow your business.
